A Pretty Taste For Paradox
by ThunderheadFred
Summary: After being resurrected by Cerberus, Shepard is a raw nerve, a stranger in her own skin. Why else would the never-ending nattering of Professor Mordin Solus send a shiver down her spine?
1. Hypoglossal

**Notes:**

This fic began as a personal challenge, one of those all-too-dangerous brainstorming _what-ifs._ In this case: _"what if Mordin Solus was a full-fledged asexual ME2/3 love interest?"_ Turns out the answer to that question involves _way_ more angst than I ever anticipated. Also, over the course of writing this, I have been converted (wholeheartedly and without any warning) to the small but sturdy _HMS Shordin,_ a ship I _never_ expected to sail.

The title is taken from a line in the Major-General's Song from Pirates of Penzance, naturally.

Lastly, for your reference, the sensation that Shepard experiences is called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response - usually shortened to ASMR. The phenomena was only recently named and is still relatively unknown to science.

* * *

 **01: Hypoglossal**

* * *

It is her first night.

First, she thinks, because everything is new. There is no continuity. The reawakened world shines with an aura of careful manufacturing.

Miranda's full report on the Lazarus project blinks in Shepard's hand. Unread. Certain questions: cybernetics, brain death, the reincarnation of the soul… have answers that Shepard would rather leave beneath the skin.

Her body is every inch as impressive and uncomfortable as the ship. This plagiarized, insulting _SR-2,_ Shepard's _Normandy_ no more. Re-engineered by terrorists, the vessel is both hollow and wildly out of proportion. Like Shepard it is splendid, gleaming, and incorrect in every detail.

At the apex of this insane aggrandizement sits the crowning jewel - Shepard's private quarters. Bigger than most apartments on the Citadel. Everything tight and military about the original has been replaced with palatial excess. _Normandy's_ graceful turian bones - replaced with a braggart's trophies. The beating heart of her crew - replaced with an AI.

Shepard is supine on the plush mattress. She tries to sleep, but finds it difficult while drowning in the grandiose blue light of an aquarium fit for a zoo.

Whatever the Commander is now, she is fighting different monsters altogether. The victory against Saren: hard won and entirely pointless.

She tries to force the sleep to come.

It won't.

Her eyelids won't close. She can't look away from the inescapable panorama above her bed. There it is, inches away. A gaping view of the firmament. The pitiless black coffin where she had asphyxiated and watched the _SR-1_ burn alongside her, a picture window into her own personal Hell.

Breathtaking.

* * *

Miranda's advice is too sensible to ignore, no matter how badly it chafes.

The Professor is Shepard's first personnel acquisition. So far, his dossier is the only one that makes any sense at all. If she is forced to do the Illusive Man's dirty work, the least she can do is start with a man of science.

But naturally, this scientist is nothing like a man.

Instead, he is salarian in the extreme. Pale and sharp as a scalpel, capable of curing literal plagues. He is enthusiasm personified, and he never stops talking.

Vaguely, Shepard recalls that the occasional salarian believes in reincarnation. A wheel of life. She thinks about this while she slots his cure into a pair of giant rotating fans. Finds it difficult to think about much else when the blades spin up and fill the air with another chance. Omega's Gozu District: born again.

He tells his assistant to consider killing people in the name of the greater good, then turns to Shepard and talks about surprises.

Shepard's wheels spin. She dwells on cycles of rebirth, but doesn't ask.

He's a serious academic with a fondness for violence, and it's a stupid question.

* * *

Mordin Solus eagerly adds his name to her duty roster and immediately moves into the tech lab.

At the end of her shift, when her reports are filed and her other excuses are spent, she wanders. Needs to avoid her quarters, pathetically digging for distraction from the view upstairs, no matter how flimsy. To delay the inevitable repetition in terror, she goes to see how the Professor is finding the new facilities.

He's missing.

EDI gives away his location. The AI's voice echoes through the lab with refrigerated concern.

"Doctor Solus, I suggest that you extricate yourself from the housing of the electron microscope."

"Wonderful advice," agrees the housing of the electron microscope.

In a personable voice, no less.

Shuffling, a mild _bang,_ and then the Professor emerges from the large cabinet underneath the lab equipment. In his hand, he holds a sleek piece of tech. It looks expensive, even for the _SR-2._

"Yes… wonderful advice," he reemphasizes, turning the Cerberus listening device over in his hands. "Unfortunately, selective hearing."

Was that a _joke?_

He blinks, meets her eyes and grins with his wide, crooked mouth. Weighs the bug up and down a few times. As if hoping to guess its weight and win a prize.

"Impressive. Fanciest yet! Will return to sender." The grin widens. "Destruction of private property: bad first impression."

* * *

They find what remains of Garrus.

Even after Chakwas brings him back from the brink, something is left unfixed. He makes a joke, his once bright laughter muffled by gauze, and then he disappears. Welcoming aboard the shadow of an old friend does little to help Shepard feel at home.

Too often, she stares at the locked door of the forward battery and worries.

It has only been a few days since they last saw one another. Celebrating his reinstatement at C-Sec, they'd met at a rowdy bar in the Lower Wards for a round of drinks and banter. So clear in her mind: his sharp turian smile, all his bravado and bullshit.

Only a few days… somehow stretched into two years.

Now he only pretends to be cheerful, and avoids conversation altogether. He hides behind his duty; a lone sniper factoring in the Coriolis effect as the world rotates through his crosshairs. Gone, the young rebel who had enlivened the _SR-1_ with outrageous stories and too much sass. In his stead, the _SR-2_ has a stone Archangel, always on watch.

Garrus is rotted down: two deadened eyes and half a face. Gallows humor. In his presence, the rare moments he even allows it, Shepard feels more like a corpse than ever. As if he is the statue that has been left behind to guard her grave.

* * *

The Professor revives Shepard like a blast of fresh air.

He is always available, talkative to a fault. He only allows short dosages of conversation at a time, but even when he insists on going back to his work, he chatters to himself. Lightly, cleanly, he trots across great swaths of thought all at once. Now that the Cerberus bugs have been dealt with, he doesn't seem to care who is listening.

White noise.

A neat pair of work hours becomes an immediate custom, collaborative and quiet. One in the morning and one at night. Mineral surveys, tech upgrades, Collector data. The banality of resource management: a useful way to wipe her brain clear before the start and end of each day.

It becomes every bit as habitual as showering or brushing her teeth. An unremarked upon necessity.

Helpful, that Shepard enjoys his company. No Cerberus ties. Scars that are faded and lived-in. Most of all, unlike everyone else aboard, the Professor always appears perfectly comfortable. In his element.

Meanwhile, Shepard's skin aches and crackles over unfamiliar cybernetics. Her body reeks of chemicals, like a hospital vat of medi-gel. At night when she struggles to sleep, her upgraded brain with its upgraded implants makes her limbs twitch and her biotics flare.

She hates this body. Feels disgusted by it. Trapped inside it.

So, she ignores it. She listens to the babbling scientist, allows her mind to drift. Precisely at the moment she feels most comfortable, it happens.

* * *

The first time, Shepard panics; certain that she is about to die all over again.

Mostly awake at 0530, still groggy and anxious from another corrupted night of sleep, her senses can scarcely be called trustworthy. She is half-dressed and hunched over Doctor Solus' lab table, a lukewarm cup of coffee chilling near her hand.

While she reviews the plan to extract Subject Zero from Purgatory, The Professor twitters to himself on the other side of the lab. As always, her presence has no obvious effect on him. He paces back and forth, leaving a trail of his own muttered thoughts in his wake. She listens and her mind unclenches; going pleasantly numb.

Dead-ended, Solus suddenly falls silent. She looks up, startled by the pause.

Oblivious to her attention, he waves away his omni-tool. After it vanishes, he taps out a thoughtful rhythm against his forearm. The sound of his fingertips clicking over the ceramic plates of his armor is tiny, strange, and gentle.

Shepard stares.

For a few idle moments, the Professor continues his unconscious tapping, then he turns to the window. He looks out upon the void, clasps his hands behind his back, and releases a single deep sigh through the nostrils. The gesture is intensely academic, like something an ancient philosopher might have done on a clear night while calculating the circumference of the Earth. Poetic, almost.

Also, completely ridiculous.

Abruptly as the silence began, he breaks and starts whispering again. Bright and inspired, as if he'd never stopped.

There, the rush of now-familiar noise. Shepard catches a breath she hadn't realized she'd lost, and feels as if her nerves have been struck with a tuning fork.

A shudder thrills down the length of her spine. It flares out from the base of her skull and evaporates along her limbs in sharp, exquisite pinpricks. When it is over, every hair on her body is standing straight up in alarm. Too intense and unexpected to be called anything like pleasure, it is nothing like pain either.

Glittering through her nerves, it reminds her of the tantalizing lurch of a biotic implant about to blow.

She stops breathing and lowers her datapad, too terrified to blink.

Is she malfunctioning?

A mess of rogue cybernetics going haywire. Biotic enhancements run amok. Simple insanity. The possibilities are endless and dire, and she fills with familiar dread.

Again, always, that single niggling doubt: _she came back wrong._

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Tries to rub the gooseflesh from her arms. Across the room, Solus stops his private muttering.

He looks at her, blinking with innate curiosity.

"Shepard. Feeling alright?"

Despite his credentials, he does not use the tone of a researcher who wants to dissect her for fun. His voice is kind. It is the first genuine nicety she'd heard in days.

"Just tired," she says, ending it quickly.

He picks up her coffee mug, mostly to get it away from his console, and hands it to her.

The mug is still warm, she clutches the handle and forces her fingers to thaw. The digits relax by degrees, the hairs on her arms flatten. Finally, she nods to him and takes a sip of her coffee.

He steps away, but not so far this time, manning his station on the other side of lab table.

"Here if you need me," he says. A simple thing, but she believes him.

They go back to work.


	2. Ulnar

**02: Ulnar**

* * *

 _Purgatory_ started as a refuge for the damned, but accommodations have been made for Shepard. No surprise that this kind of pit has ample space for her. She has a soul that is anything but pure.

Under cover of a full-scale prison riot, Subject Zero is nowhere to be found. A convict with that much self-propelled firepower is too clever to waste time with Shepard's squad. Oh no, the biotic wunderkind runs off to save her own elaborate skin.

Stripped of his most valuable asset, Warden Kuril does his damnedest to turn Shepard into a replacement. A bigger, better trophy to mount on his wall of heads.

High-velocity slugs slam into her barrier. The warden's heavy-hitting M-76 is trained directly at her chest. Along with the flicker of his targeting laser, she can feel his hungry eyes roving all over. He opens fire, a muzzle climb of bullets that drifts lecherously from kneecap to shoulder. Slow and greedy, owning her.

His sin, but her fault. She'd waltzed straight into it. For a moment she just stands there, open mouthed and offended. Getting shot at. Out of sheer disgust, her barrier holds.

Unlike Shepard, Doctor Solus still has a brain in his skull, and he remembers how to use it.

Casually, he suggests: "Moving target harder to hit!" and then he grabs her.

He yanks her down to hide behind a thin band-aid of cover. Two surprisingly large and brutal hands prod at her pressure points until she comes to her senses. To buy them a few extra seconds, he tosses out a cryogenic detonator.

Shepard slumps against the barricade, drawing her shotgun. Already fed up.

"Of course he turned on us," she grumbles. "Should have seen it coming a mile away."

She hears the twinkling sound of ice crystals, and knows the cryo blast has done its job. Her shotgun does the rest.

"Betrayal… arguably inevitable," Solus says when she pauses to reload. "First human Spectre. Savior of Citadel. Raised from dead. Hero to many, trending messianic." A spare moment for eye contact. He gives her a nudge. "No wonder Kuril greedy for new prisoner - Commander Shepard: premium _Collector's_ item."

 _Knock knock,_ says his elbow, as it clinks knowingly against her armor. _Who's there?_

A horrible pun.

He waits for Shepard to laugh. She does, with vibrant disbelief.

Satisfied, he smiles. Looks a little nuts.

With a flick of the wrist, he absentmindedly hurls an incinerator charge into a cluster of prison guards. The turians go up in screaming flames. Even at this distance, she can smell the bluish tang of dextro-amino acids sizzling on the bone.

Her barrier is back to full strength. She breathes in static and ozone, swallowing the familiar nausea. Flaring her biotics to throw a warp, something feels wrong. No time to stop it. Lurching beneath her feet, the room swells. A drunk feeling tosses her off balance. Then everything collapses into neon streaks, rushing wildly past her ears.

One pump of a shotgun later, she's standing fifty yards from where she started, wreathed in the Professor's flames, surrounded by prison guards. How she got there; she has no idea.

More hidden surprises. Cerberus.

No time. She blinks once and starts firing.

Anything that steps into her path is set courteously ablaze, a veil of panic between her and the enemy. Anything that looks like it might live, her shotgun rips to pieces.

 _Just the thing to help._

* * *

Only moments after clearing decon, the briefing room is cramped with pent-up biotics and rage.

"Just give her the damn files, Miranda."

Miranda huffs daintily, but agrees to Jack's conditions. Shepard leaves without another word, still reeking of smoke. Heart still thundering from a genuine firefight.

A moment of doubt, then she walks ten paces to starboard.

The instant she crosses the threshold into the lab, she gulps down a lungful of cold, cleansing air. In grateful silence, she walks to the upgrade console and orders a complete ground-floor overhaul of the squad's Ablative VI suite. Simply out of spite.

From the corner of one eye, she watches the Professor, fascinated.

While Shepard pushes buttons - burning through palladium and pretending to be useful - he is already back to performing his delicate alchemy. Whatever it is that he does in here all day and all night. She has no idea. His miracle cure against the seeker swarms.

He's had only minutes to prep. Already, there are dozens of vials and pipettes dancing across his laboratory bench. Organized chaos. She is reminded of a page of music. A dense and untranslatable jumble, as far as she's concerned. Subjected to his capable talents - probably capable of becoming something magnificent. Or dangerous. Or more likely, both.

Strict and slow, he exchanges liquids between samples. Drop - by - drop - by - drop.

Vial in hand, he swirls the solution until it resolves into little golden flecks. He squints at each miraculous grain as it is conjured inexplicably from disparate parts. Nods carefully. Repeats.

She lets out a breath of relief so all-encompassing that it hurts. Eyes closing automatically, she listens to his fragile work.

Glass clicking against glass.

Infinitesimal tinkering

The ringing of bells.

It happens again. Shivers drip down her scalp like the wet center of a cracked egg. Indefinable in origin, the feeling pools behind her ears, drags across the nape of her neck, swirls over the skin of her arms.

This time, she isn't frightened. Unlike everything else about her new body, this is painless. Hyperactive nerves: by far the least terrifying side-effect of Cerberus' many enhancements. Malfunction or not, it is a completely novel experience. A welcome distraction.

The Professor puts down his instruments and runs both hands along the fabric of his lab coat, dusting off. The sound hits her like a warp field, enveloping her all at once. She allows it; lets her mind go blank beneath the tingling rush of nerves. An electric breeze wafts across her skin.

Her breath catches, hands floating off the console.

She is mesmerized.

"Unpleasant." He mutters.

For a brief moment, she thinks he is referring to her. She opens her eyes, face soaked red with embarrassment.

"Glad you and not me. Interpersonal squabbles… inspirational speeches." He gestures to the conference room with his one good horn, then runs his hands across his coat once more. "Encountered similar squabbles in STG. Myself? Prefer ice weaponized - not so good at breaking. Might have incinerated both parties."

He pauses, looks into a vial half empty. Or is it half full? Shakes his head.

"Mmm. Incineration tech particularly dangerous within confines of spacefaring vessel. High oxygen atmosphere. Contents under pressure. Little spark..."

He looks at her, deadpan.

"Big boom."


	3. Lumbar

**03: Lumbar**

* * *

The Admiral's message arrives. Wreckage wrapped like a gift, equal parts condolence and command. The bones of the _SR-1_ have washed up on some distant, icy shore. Briefly, Shepard considers making the pilgrimage. The thought lives in her for a few vulnerable hours, but it can't survive the night.

During her sleepless staring match with the stars, Shepard's skin crawls, then begins to itch so insistently that she has to leave the bed. Has to leave the room.

She paces through the desolate third shift corridors. Stalks the empty crew deck. Stares at the locked door of the forward battery and finally decides against Alchera entirely. Too direct, too much like spitting in God's eye. If she goes back, whatever delicate paradox fills her with breath will collapse like a punctured lung.

Thanks to Miranda and the Illusive Man, Shepard has walked out of her own grave - but she knows that plot of earth is far from empty. No, her would-be resting place is full to bursting. The iced-over bones of twenty comrades, lying there in wait.

She's staring at the floor, counting tiles so that she doesn't have to count names.

He's staring at a datapad, reviewing a chemical analysis while making a quick shower run.

They collide head-on. A clatter of kneecaps, then the bruising wham of two intersecting torsos. The chest guard of his armor strikes her collarbones with xylophone precision, buckling her in half. She stumbles, her face installs neatly into his neck.

One offended inhalation of wrinkled skin. She realizes two things. First: he's the tallest person she's ever met. Second: his skin has an herbaceous aftertaste. It takes her a moment, then the scent memory arrives. Eucalyptus. Mint, maybe. Something cut from a tree with a sharp knife, milky green sap protected by years of heavy bark.

"Shepard! Must apologize. Corridor typically less crowded at three hundred hours."

She shakes herself, going red, but embarrassment is a lost cause. Instantly, a doctor's unsentimental hands are on her. Checking for bruises, lacerations, mortal wounds. He shoves his datapad into her arms and puts both hands to her temples, bending her neck experimentally from side to side. No spinal injuries.

"I'm fine, Professor. Skip the exam."

His squint, aimed like an x-ray. So intensely _not convinced_ that she feels warm radiation penetrating her bones. Huge armored hands, spanning both sides of her head, covering her ears. Big enough to block out the noise of the ship and substitute a clean ceramic echo, the purr within a seashell.

"Not CMO. Can't give you orders," he says, nearly to himself.

His long fingers have drifted into her hair. A glitter of sea foam trickles down her scalp. She tries to hide a startled inhale, but his eyes are too big to be fooled.

He adds: "Can offer professional advice."

He releases her slowly, letting his left hand drag to her shoulder. No question that his eyes see the gooseflesh, the shiver, all the evidence that collects in the wake of his cool, armored fingers.

"Let's hear it, then," she grunts.

"Rest, Shepard. Please."

Her shoulder receives a squeeze. A firm grip that could be accused of becoming a caress if left unattended.

With nothing more to add, he takes back his datapad and finishes his walk to the showers.

Shepard returns to her cabin, tries to follow his advice. For the first time since being remade, her mind is not fixated on the hole in the ceiling. She's trapped in a mirror image, dwelling on the solidity of the floor.

Two decks below, Mordin Solus is naked.

Until now, it had never occurred to Shepard that Mordin Solus had a body beneath his armor at all.

* * *

Four hours later, Korlus lurks outside the otherwise serene laboratory window. Calling it a habitable world requires a lie of optimism. When it is surrounded by pure black vacuum, viewed from a distance of thousands of kilometers, the planet appears trampled. Mud gray and pale with smog, a congealed mass that has endured too many aeons beneath the boil of a heat lamp.

Out here in the Terminus, they call this undignified rock the Starcraft Cemetery. It's a grandiose title that can't erase the planet's mercenary holdings and shameful murder rate - second only to Omega. Shepard can almost smell the metal slag and toxic fumes from here.

It's just like a krogan warlord to have a taste for wreckage.

She wonders with an acidic hiccup of nostalgia if any chunks of the SR-1 have somehow ended up down there. Scavengers, traders, a Cerberus flunky with old debts to pay. Scant possibilities, thin spider threads trailing down from alternate universes. Some small battered scrap of her past might be rescued from this dung heap. The idea is romantic, and far more appealing than Alchera.

Shepard stares at the Cemetary without seeing it. The translucent, filmy overlay of Professor Solus flickers in the glass. Where his image reflects above the planet, that is where her eyes rest. Haloed by the eclipse of a trash heap, he inputs mundane experimental data into his console, ignoring her.

The lab has been unusually quiet this morning. Tense and silent.

The awkwardness has nothing to do with their late-night meeting on the crew deck. Nothing to do with her. The Professor exists outside her world of stirred breaths and fluttering heartbeats. Probably incapable of noticing.

He's mad about the krogan.

Not a word since Shepard had ordered the ex-STG agent to accompany her planet-side. Solus is a tactical gimme: krogan redundancies gobbled up in the heat of his incendiaries. Their regenerating limbs and organs stunted by the lick of hungry flames. If this krogan decides to be difficult, Shepard wants the Professor around. Just like she wants a backup biotic. Keep the warp fields coming. Jack will get a chance to stretch her twitchy, bloodthirsty legs.

Shepard is disappointed. Instead of the logical unflappability she has come to expect from the Professor, he is throwing a salarian hissy-fit. Politics and bullshit, all of it ancient history.

She takes a forceful sip of coffee. Cold already. Bitter with aluminum aftertaste.

 _Enough._

Scowling, she fills the unwelcome silence with her own rough voice.

"What kind of research did you do with STG?"

Her interruption is sudden and tactless, but he doesn't flinch. Almost as if he'd expected this, he turns his head. Enough to show he is listening, not enough to meet her eye. He keeps picking at his work.

"Studied krogan genophage."

A quick answer, even by his standards. He follows it up with a glance at his omni-tool's haptic interface. But the look is a little too long, the screen a little too empty of data. He seems hesitant to say more. Perhaps he assumes she wouldn't be interested.

Or perhaps he's hiding something.

She pushes.

"Why would the STG study a bio-weapon that was deployed hundreds of years ago?"

She annunciates every word carefully, laying her homework at his feet. His alien body language is harder to read than the countless human beings she gamed for the Reds. So she watches carefully. Catches a rigid pulse in the winding length of his spine. A nerve, struck.

"All species evolve, adapt, mutate." He finally says, with a masking shrug. "If genophage weakens, need to be prepared."

Almost a decade spent shaking down saps for money and drugs, eyes roving for undercover cops. Even from behind, across a tangle of incompatible genetic queues, she knows how to spot a liar.

"Prepared," she says, unimpressed. "Prepared how?"

He still won't turn and look at her, but in the stifling quiet she can hear his heavy eyelids close. Open. Close again. Cautious seconds, buying time. She recognizes a last-ditch defense mechanism when she sees one.

He tries overloading her with information, hurling a tech attack from behind thin cover.

"Military schematics for likely krogan population growth. Political scenarios for attack points. Genophage reduced krogan numbers. Species aggression unchecked. Population explosion would be disastrous."

His decoy babble floats through her head, then she hears the tell; that forceful intake of breath.

"Simple recon. Nothing to worry about."

"Never said I was worried," she says, voice packed thick with warning.

In mirror-dark reflection, she watches the suspicious tightening of the Professor's flexible salarian backbone. How many vertebrae he must have. So many spongy layers of delicate cartilage, weak and exposed. His back to her, propped up like a stack of cards. All that strategy and care, just to keep himself standing. She wonders how he does it.

She hopes her investment in the mission excuses her stare. Her eyes haven't left him since she entered the lab.

That, she knows, is another lie of optimism. Her fascination has nothing to do with fragile galactic politics. It begins and ends in the Professor's lab. A shared twinge of the spine. One-to-one symmetry, following a path of flaring nerves and niggling doubts.

For secret weaknesses, the two of them appear evenly matched.


	4. Buccal

**04: Buccal**

* * *

Out with the old, in with the new. An appropriate if ugly sentiment, considering.

On Korlus, Warlord Okeer is murdered in his own mad laboratory. He leaves behind a legacy that spits on his grave: a full-grown krogan abandoned on Shepard's doorstep like an infant in a basket. When the baby wakes and squalls, his first instinct is to kill.

That in and of itself is nothing surprising. A lot of things have tried to kill Shepard. People, animals, an entire race of vengeful god-machines. Dodging murderous rampages is beginning to feel mundane. A handshake and an easy ask? Unthinkable.

Also unsurprising: how easily Shepard negotiates with a tank-born killing machine. A few rounds of argumentative pistol fire barely scratch the krogan's hide, but they do get his attention. He reconsiders her puniness. Rumbles about worthiness and rage. Finally agrees to cooperate against the Collectors.

Easy. One more crude exchange in blood, and Shepard has bought another ally.

More than that, perhaps. Watching the bloodstain blooming across the newborn krogan's custom armor, Shepard feels she's found a kindred spirit. They have a lot in common, after all. Just like Okeer's monument to his own insanity, Shepard has her own cruel birthright.

Pulled out a dead mother, left without roots or scaffolding, Shepard had grown up clinging to whatever cause suited her best. She had always been stubborn and weed-like. Had learned to thrust herself between the pavement cracks and demand the sun.

Now, those cracks are visible. A web of cybernetics and raw power, seething beneath her skin. She can't stand to look in the mirror anymore. What she sees - a reflection more truthful than ever - is someone unrecognizable.

She watches the pistol slugs fall from the krogan's regenerating hide. One by one, they plink to the deck, microscopic shavings from her ammunition block. Thickened with flesh, shining with gore, they look both hideous and trustworthy, like obols for the ferryman.

He names himself Grunt.

* * *

After being dragged to Korlus, the Professor grows stiff. Once Grunt begins freely wandering the ship, that stiffness chills to ice. There's a shift in the pitch of his silence. A low sub-harmonic filled with grim intentionality. His lack of acknowledgment no longer seems like the innocent quirk of a preoccupied genius.

Sometimes she thinks she hears him humming funeral dirges. Playing her out in minor key. Perhaps she's imagining it.

Perhaps not.

The Professor's chill spreads through the ship, until Shepard worries she'll start walking through clouds of her own guilty breath. Now that she has released a krogan berserker from his crib and loosed him on the ship, she sees fewer friendly faces than ever.

She tries to tease the problem into submission: laughing assurances to the crew that no one will be bludgeoned, stabbed, skewered, or eaten. But they're a tough crowd. Most of the Cerberus personnel clam up entirely. Brief, sideways looks whenever she walks past, unsure what she might unleash on them if they speak out of turn.

Through the tight, professional smiles, she loathes them. Imposters, to the last.

* * *

Another morning. From her first breath, Shepard is already tired.

In the bathroom, she throws cold water at her face and avoids making eye contact with her reflection. In her cabin, she stares into the drawer of options that Cerberus has left for her. Considerately, creepily, an entire wardrobe in exactly the correct sizes.

There's enough of the facsimile about her already. The thought of continuing this charade, of dressing like Cerberus' whitewashed idea of a Marine, makes Shepard's jaw ache from clenching. More unsettling still: the strange, presumptuous approximation of a Captain's formal blues, done up in silky, villainous black.

She stares at the rock and the hard place and feels more toyed-with than ever. She wonders exactly who arranged these clothes in this drawer. Wonders who measured Shepard's corpse to ensure the proper fit while she was convalescing on Miranda's slab. Each outfit is spotless and pristinely folded, presented in sterile plastic like a gift. Like clothing for a doll.

Shuddering, Shepard changes her mind at the last second and grabs the least familiar option: the science uniform. Pretending on purpose feels less offensive to her principles. She has always preferred shooting things to studying them. Curiosity is a costume, nothing more.

Still, the inaccessible full-body coverage has its benefits. The science uniform is constricting in a way the presumptuous military lookalikes are not. Like a compression bandage, the tight fit eases some of the soreness from her swollen, grey-green bruises. It relieves some of the tingling pain from her implants.

 _Some._ But not enough.

* * *

0500.

Coffee firmly in hand, mouth a thin line, Shepard walks into the tech lab.

As she enters, the Professor looks up from his console. Despite an unwelcome, ugly silence, he allows too obvious a pause. A rare and quiet breath, taken only for her.

His eyes adjust to her new uniform. Slowly, gaze sticking to certain curves, he studies her from head to toe. The implication of that look is heavy. Unfathomable.

She'd planned to retrieve EDI's latest mineral survey data and leave. But now, like a captured planet, she cannot escape his gravity. The weight of one long, languid salarian blink is all it takes to compel her in the wrong direction. She feels nauseated. Liquified chunks of something once alive, centrifugally smashed to the sides of a test tube. Just another one of his experiments.

Disgusted with herself, Shepard hides behind a data-pad and makes a show of business on the opposite end of the lab. EDI's analysis of this sector's surface-mining potential is long and thorough, and Shepard scrolls through it three times. Retaining nothing. She stands with her back to an old salarian scientist, feeling naked and alarmed.

"Appreciate gesture, Commander."

She hears his voice, but it takes some moments before her brain processes the sound into anything recognizable. Looking up from her data-pad, she nearly yelps. He's an arm's breadth away.

She has too much pride to jump. Nonetheless, his undiscovered approach comes as an embarrassing jolt. If he'd been sent to assassinate her, she'd already be cooling in a pool of her own blood.

Seeing her reaction, the corner of his mouth quirks. Familiar, friendly.

She blurts, "What?"

It comes out too strong. A grunt. She's taking after the tank-born already.

Stepping closer, he scratches the x-shaped scar on the side of his face. His voice is bright as he chatters: "Been too long. Grateful to have fellow researcher again. Isolating - lonely - to be solitary mad scientist aboard ship built by mad scientists." His smile cracks open, crooked and lean. "Like-minded company? Most welcome!"

She thinks about grabbing his shoulder in furious relief, but laughs instead. Too loudly. "I'm a mad scientist now?"

"Mmm. Certainly. Know the type. Recognize the signs." That sharp, telling inhale, then he reaches for her hand. Voice close and warm, he _hmms,_ whispering, "all mad here."

Courteously, he rotates Shepard's data-pad half a turn - so that she might pretend to read her survey right-side up.


	5. Enteric

**Notes:**  
Shepard hits rock bottom. This is as dark as things are likely to get. Soon, recovery.  
Content warnings: alcohol abuse and suicidal ideation.

* * *

 **05: Enteric**

* * *

Just after 0145, the _Normandy_ adrift. For once, Shepard is in her quarters. Alone, half-awake. So exhausted that her head thrums with the sound of her own pulse, a low ringing in her ears. A warning. Still, she can't sleep. She reads an e-mail for the fourth time without seeing it, and wonders if she's dreaming.

The moment the thought occurs, EDI pings. The Illusive Man wishes to speak with her.

In the comm room, a bright-eyed hologram tells Shepard the worst, and the feeling of unreality only deepens. Horizon has gone silent, with Ashley Williams MIA. The Illusive Man tells her this with a cigarette in one hand, looking pleased. He denies her request to notify the Citadel, does so with easy, casual disdain, like refusing a drink.

Staring through that arrogant orange suggestion of a man, Shepard wishes she could wring his throat. Her fingers ache, but she suppresses the urge.

He is only an illusion, after all.

* * *

By the time they arrive, Horizon is a ghost town.

Colonists litter their own front yards. Frozen like statues, their still-living eyes dart back and forth, livid with terror.

"Victim appears conscious. Fully aware. Trapped in stasis. Fascinating." The Professor's words are observational, but his face draws tight with concern.

Shepard knows his countermeasure is all that keeps her from joining these ranks. Standing there, her spine chilled with fear, even that feels like too little, too late. Another speechless, paralyzed body. He observes that too, and reaches for his sidearm, thawing her.

"Keep moving," she says, but the words are not her own.

* * *

The Collectors swarm, but Shepard always stings first. Instinct and muscle memory, adrenaline and rage. The nightmare fights back: winged monsters that descend like starving locusts. To finish her, they unleash a hovering lump of screaming faces, an abomination with a dozen skittering limbs, writhing and hungry.

Fine. This fight is nothing special; like every fight, it is merely long and difficult. In the end, when the praetorian withers into dust and Ash appears from its hideous mist, Shepard has already gone numb to surprises.

* * *

"Garrus, you too?"

Shepard's stomach churns. No, anything but that. Leave him out of this. She tries to explain, tries to rationalize, but too much data is missing. Redacted.

Ash, blunt as ever, is hardly fooled. Faith in higher powers can only take them so far. Miracles are for nobler heads, and Shepard deals with devils.

"Ash, you know me."

"I used to. What did they do to you?"

The truth is, Shepard has no idea.

* * *

Ash turns her back, her _"good luck"_ thrown to Shepard's feet like spit, like a curse.

A heavy palm lands on her arm, squeezing. "She'll come around. I've still got your six, Commander."

She reaches up to return the sentiment, but Garrus is already walking away, headed for the shuttle. He rolls his neck, shouldering his rifle with cold precision. Steady but distant, he means what he says.

She nods at his retreating shape. Good enough.

One step, then her knee buckles. The shin guard on her right leg pops off, falls lamely into the grass. She'd forgotten; had stopped noticing the pain. She looks at a patch of melted under-suit, trying to feel anything at all. Staring at the curdled and blackened flesh of her calf, she smells only meat.

Professor Solus doesn't wait for orders, his hip is already pressed to hers. A flat, sinewy brace. He pulls her arm across his shoulders, tight and close, yanking her upright. His hand closes over her wrist, circling the joint completely. Through layers of armor, her skin pinches beneath his fingers. Painfully, she wakes with a start.

"Should have that looked at," he quips, now that he has her attention. Winding his thin, sturdy arm around her waist, he nods at her leg. "Festering wounds... Dangerous."

* * *

Chakwas mends Shepard's leg with little trouble, minimal discomfort. The doctor's follow-up regimen is more difficult to swallow. Shore leave, mandatory. A minimum length of one full shift rotation, dooming Shepard to roam.

The Citadel is as good a place as any. Shepard's first visit since being remade. The hub of galactic civilization, where a mountain of someone else's paperwork declares her a ghost. For a former Spectre, this seems an appropriate fate.

Between pulses of neon, soaked in blue pools of shadow and her own nervous sweat, Shepard feels shimmery, half-made. Not so different from those asphalt-flavored nights of her teens. Distant now, far flung - the steaming alleyways of Los Angeles loom in the dark of her memory like hallucinated fever-dreams. Zakera Ward's neglected corridors taste of the same sticky fog, the same belching pollution. Scent memories of her own forgotten waste, thick and choking as tobacco smoke.

Something like comfort, in that.

 _Leave._ A reward for not dying on Horizon. For not dying over Alchera. For not dying, full stop. An unearned trophy, a brassy fake - normalcy. Such an ordinary prize, such a dull cup to drink from. Still, before long, all Shepard feels is thirst.

Alone and unobserved, she grinds the night to dust in a mostly-empty bar on the outer edge of the ward arm. Surrounded by aging, slumped-over dextros, she goads the turian bartender until he humors her with more. _More._

* * *

Everything spirals dizzily down around her glass, and she wakes up near a drain.

Gasping, choking, she sees only details. Blinking slowly, eyes dull with crust, she stares at tiles and toilets, the filthy specifics of a bathroom. Her throat burns. An acidic, coppery taste lines her mouth; she has vomited recently.

The room refuses to steady. Solid ground lurches out and away, veering off into the dark. She realizes then: her head is in someone's lap.

 _No._

She swings. Her fist claps into an empty palm. Two ceramic-sharp fingers close around her hand. A familiar, forceful grip.

"Solus," she says. Or thinks she does. Her voice is bending in all the wrong directions, the world spinning inside-out. All the Professor hears is thick slurry.

"Quiet," he says. A university lecture compressed into a single disapproving grunt. He releases her fist, grabs a thin cloth. A medical wipe that he scrapes across her face with merciless attention, cold and clean. "Blood alcohol approaching four-hundred milligrams per deciliter. Even with Cerberus implants…" a furious noise as his hand slaps to her forehead, forcing her head back. He shines blinding lights into both pupils, checking for dilation. "Stupid. Reckless."

She tries to roll away, but one of his arms is locked beneath her. His hand, curving around her shoulder, provides the only constant, her solitary pivot-point. Around him, everything tumbles. Behind him, someone walks in. A stranger: a turian with one hand in his pants, ready to use the facilities.

"Get out," the Doctor spits, not looking up.

The turian sees enough submachine gun on the salarian's hip to be convinced. He turns around without another word. The Professor waves his omni-tool, locking the door against further intruders. He pulls a large foil sachet from his hip, pierces it, and holds it to Shepard's mouth.

"Swallow." A deliberate command. The word he won't use is _drink._

Warm as her own tongue, the electrolyte solution is thin, salty. As she swallows, the dam breaks, and he starts to ramble. Once released, words rush through his teeth like steam through a grate, rolling hotly across her face.

"After Horizon, anticipated poor coping skills. Thought I had full picture. Gang history, substance abuse. Akuze, post-traumatic stress. Therapy. _Recovery._ No mention of suicidal ideation. Not in official file. Not in classified redactions. If observed, CMO would have taken precautions. Lawson should have-"

She coughs, trying to speak, trying to shut him up - but all she does is hurt.

His hand clenches into her shoulder, bruising. His other hand produces a rapid injection pen.

Finding her voice, Shepard finds it weak and cracked. "F-fuck that. I don't need it. I didn't die."

 _"Wrong!"_

Calming himself, the Doctor loads a hemo-detox cartridge into the injector. One smooth, single-handed movement that looks easier than breathing. "Aspirated. Respiratory failure… _Terrible_ death."

In a movement too fast and precise to track, he rips an opening in the thigh of her trousers. Pressing the injection pen against her skin, her offers one warning:

"Pain."

The dispenser activates, and she learns how much he means it. The chemicals scorch through her muscles, burning the alcohol out of her veins. She pushes back, writhing, but he is stronger than he looks. One arm curled beneath her shoulders, the other braced heavily on her chest.

As the spasm hits, he holds her still.

Evacuating toxins flood her implants. Her nerves flare white-hot. A bright, cleansing fire seethes through her cybernetics, bleeding through her scars. Unstoppable, the wave of pain hits like thresher acid, like the disintegrating friction of atmo.

As the detox rips her to pieces, he holds her still.

By the time it ends, her eyes are streaming. His grip softens. She can't think, can't breathe… Her lips move and words fall out, but she can't hear herself.

What she does hear: his armor falling away. A mechanical hiss, hydraulics and pressure seals, the empty _clang_ of his chest brace hitting tile. Prised open, his weakest point exposed, he gathers her closer, folding her against the warm hollow of his chest. Only there, only then, does she realize she's still babbling.

"Not anymore," he says quieting her. One cool hand, broad as a shield, flattens across her scalp. "Not alone."

As she weeps, he holds her still.


	6. Cochlear

**06: Cochlear**

* * *

 _Doctor - Doctor_

 _Oh Doctor, won't you please tinker?_  
 _We'd like her to look more presentable._  
 _It's this skin weave, you see; cutting-edge but so uncooperative._

 _Of course, Doctor!_  
 _I'll see about pasting together this creaky face of hers._  
 _See how it's too hard - too cold! - to ever pass for the real Shepard?_  
 _Not fooling anyone with this lump of not-quite-human!_  
 _See how it barely covers this not-quite-face!_  
 _Tut-Tut! We must do better!_

 _Terrible, Doctor!_  
 _She keeps cracking like an egg!_  
 _We can't explain it!_

 _Doctor - Doctor_

* * *

"Her cybernetic scars are only getting worse," says the first doctor.

"Agreed," says the second. "New fissures. Deeper."

Shepard, trapped between two overeager medical examiners, has finally had enough.

"I'm right here," she grunts. Popping her shoulder, she tries to find a comfortable angle on the stiff med-bay cot. She can't.

Doctor Solus stares down at her. Cordially invited to the med-bay by Doctor Chakwas as consultant on Shepard's post-Lazarus progress, a professional exchange of pleasantries and light human experimentation.

His low _hmm,_ calm and apologetic, soothes the twitching cord in Shepard's neck. Missing nothing, his eyes flicker to the affected area and stay there.

"My apologies, Commander," Chakwas says, crossing her arms. "But I'm at a loss. Your scars have proven exceptionally stubborn. If you'd like me to attempt a temporary cosmetic fix, I may have the surgical means but—"

"Not necessary," Solus interrupts. He mutters indistinctly into his palm and takes a deep breath, keeping his gaze on Shepard. "Need to confront underlying issue. Holistic approach."

Chakwas turns to her salarian co-conspirator, eyebrows high. "Holistic? What do you suggest?"

One quick breath to fuel his vocabulary, then, "Have you considered psychoneuroimmunological approach to cybernetic discomfort? Dysregulation of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis may impede tissue regeneration. Severe cytokine proinflammatory response also probable—"

"Slow down." Chakwas shakes her head, laughing. "I'm a world-weary CMO, not a med-school dictionary."

"Ah." His light chuckle, airy and free, tickles the hairs on the crown of Shepard's head. "Simply put, coming back to life: _complicated._ Lazarus project, Cerberus enhancements. Reconstruction. Reincarnation."

Shepard stiffens - he sees.

"Still human," he says, quietly. "Still _you._ Can prove it!"

Chakwas smiles, rolling her eyes. "He _did_ prove it. Elaborated on my _perfectly thorough_ test results for another two-hundred pages. The footnotes alone read like a geneticist's romance novel—"

"Side project," he says, quickly. "Your recovery… unprecedented. Unknown stressors acting on system." He pauses, as if considering how best to proceed. "Have observed suggestive comorbidities. Disrupted diurnal rhythm, nerve sensitivity, chronic pain—" he ticks his head to one side, silencing himself.

For once, she is grateful for what little he leaves unsaid. Regarding Shepard's lapse on the Citadel, Solus has kept his own counsel. His only intervening measure: a stubborn series of emails encouraging Shepard to meet with Chakwas about her scars, thus...

Chakwas frowns. "Have you been experiencing pain, Commander?" The doctor scrolls through a data-pad, frown deepening. "There are several non-habit-forming pharmaceuticals we could consider—"

"No drugs," Shepard snaps. Solus shows no outward sign of acknowledgement, but there is a secretive weight behind his silence. "No drugs," Shepard repeats. I can handle it."

Simply, but with great feeling, Solus says, "Must disagree."

"Fine… Fine!" She surrenders, cutting him off before he can say any more. "I get it. Little spark, big boom..."

He shifts. Barely appreciable, but she knows him well enough by now. Tiny, critical details: lengthening of the neck, squaring of the shoulders, widening of the eyes. He's surprised.

She stretches her stiff spine against the examination table. "What do you need me to do?"

Solus smiles. "Provide honest answer to personal question."

She looks at him, face hard.

Gently, his armored hand lowers onto her shoulder. "Prolonged skin-to-skin contact, offensive to you?"

* * *

The Professor moves his naked hand through Shepard's hair. Cool, smooth fingertips trail along her scalp. Wherever he travels, tingling follows, shuddering and deep. Considerately, he reunites his thumb with a particularly sensitive patch: the downy notch behind her ear. Knowing how closely he is watching her responses, her skin prickles. Differently.

"Yes… Suspected. See it now. Involuntary nerve response."

Shepard doesn't open her eyes. Easier to do this laying in the dark, pretending it's a dream. Solus stands at the head of Shepard's examination table like a lean, white headstone. His closeness is alarming. His gentleness, doubly so.

Chakwas asks, "Are these nerve flares symptomatic? Damage from the implants, perhaps?"

"Oh no. Not damage. Heightened sensitivity. Observing Shepard's reaction to stimuli, have noted paresthesia, acute horripilation…"

He pauses. Leaning forward, he whispers, "…mild euphoria."

Chakwas must be making some kind of doubtful face, because Solus says, "Assure you, nerve stimulation therapy rooted in legitimate science. Psychoneuroimmunologics. On Sur'Kesh: critical field, deep research opportunities, ample compensation. May come as shock, but salarians… biologically predisposed to stress."

He employs a dry sarcasm, but the self-effacing tone is undeniable. "Short lives, rapid metabolism, origins in prey species. No time to waste on fits of _ennui._ Rapid, holistic treatment of anxiety necessary for adequate physiological functioning."

He takes a regretful breath. "Myself? Never advanced past hobbyist. Dabbled, in University. Charming human phrase: 'will give the old college try.' Worst case, Commander experiences minor disorientation." A telling breath, the sound of a smile as he moves much closer. "Minor embarrassment also possible."

It is Chakwas who speaks, but Shepard who wonders: "Oh _my._ What exactly is about to happen in here?"

"Autonomous nerve therapy. Prized stress reliever. Pleasant. _Tingly._ If successful, could mend psychosomatic symptoms. Speed nerve recovery. Better sleep. Improved mood. Longer lifespan. List goes on."

Thoughtfully, he _hmms._ "Delicate procedure necessitates… ambiance. Imagine: _spa._ Not surgical suite." The lights dim, and the Professor shifts. "Ah. Appreciate assistance, Karin. Now, would appreciate privacy."

Chakwas tuts affectionately. "Kicked out of my own med-bay." To Shepard, she adds breezily, "Commander, if he tries any STG funny business…"

"I can take him."

* * *

Moments later, she's not so sure.

Solus has pulled up a tall stool, leveling himself with Shepard's exam table. From the shoulders up, she hangs off the table. Head in his lap, she is at his mercy. This time, despite the renewed shock, she doesn't wind back her arm and punch him immediately. Much to her credit, she thinks.

He curls one hand under her face, angles her head into a better working direction. With his other hand, he taps at her exposed cheek with a fiber-optic probe. Immediately, she feels like a science experiment.

A foolish hope, but she had honestly believed him better than this. All tinkering and tests while her defenses are down. Inches, perhaps, but still a long way to fall.

He senses the shift, sighs. "Commander. Apologies for rude awakening. Must take baseline reading before commencing procedure. Momentary discomfort. Please, relax."

"Professor, get that goddamn probe out of my face and stop wasting my—"

"Prefer Mordin."

She stares, taken aback.

As usual, he fills her silence. "Customary to skip formalities during STG interrogation. To victim, simply: Mordin."

In one blink, despite all her best efforts, she empties of rage.

"Aha!" He leans over, grinning. Upside down and utterly mad. _"Humor._ Suspected weakness. Have you now." Humming thoughtfully, he drops the cold medical instrument to a tray. "Commander— no, Shepard— no. May I call you Grace?"

No one calls her Grace. A single syllable, a smudged stamp on her birth record, nothing more. She's too startled to answer.

"Grace, for maximum efficacy, must introduce specialized medical interface. Critical to success."

She watches, stunned into total silence, as he reaches into the hip of his lab coat. From that inter-dimensional pocket, that mysterious realm of shadow, he extracts… a fish.

A small, yellow creature - swimming nervously in a sealed plastic packet.

"Thessian sunfish," he says. Plainly, almost bored, as if this is a reasonable explanation. "Schooling species, social. Will require six, seven other tank-mates. Recommended minimum. Until then, quite miserable."

"Professor…"

She stumbles, too confused to form the sentence. Trying again, she stares at the fish. "Did you. Seriously. Buy me a _pet?"_

"Ridiculous human assumption. _Pet!_ No, no. Medical equipment." He pushes the fish into her hands. "Keep in quarters. Feed once daily."

"Solus, what the hell—"

"Quiet. Please. Calm sunfish necessary for successful procedure. Also, reminder: prefer Mordin."

* * *

He hums an unrecognizable tune to himself, flexing his hands as if readying to play an elaborate piano solo. Gone, his usual bony exoskeleton, the flame-throwing tech gauntlets of a crazed laboratory technician. With all that intimidating superstructure removed, his hands appear soft, plain, and white as milk. Two fingers on each hand, long and supple, tipped with broad, amphibious pads.

He notices her admiring glance, twinkles his attractive hands through the air. "Thought I was harmless, did you?" He returns his hands to her face, resting one on either temple. Left, right, he slowly turns her head in his lap.

He whispers, "Deep breaths. Nasal intake preferable. Eyes on fish."

Balanced on her sternum, resting between her hands, the little yellow medical device swims in frantic circles, tickling her palms.

She humors him. Deep breaths through a stubborn nose. An angry sound. He rolls her head back and forth, back and forth, movements growing slower, more persuasive, with each passing inhale. She watches, dimly mesmerized, as the sunfish calms alongside her.

"Recommend loosening of shoulders. Concentrate on fish. Pretend I'm not here. Figment of imagination… fever dream… psychotic break? Pick favorite."

As she inhales, breathing the tension out of her shoulders, he moves one hand to the base of her neck, slots the base of her skull into the wide V between his fingers. Knowingly, his thumb circles that tender notch of bone above her ear. The room suddenly seems much quieter. Mordin, likewise, seems much closer.

So lightly, so tenderly, taking great care, he touches her. His right index finger traces the crown of her head, her forehead, her brows. Breathing slowly, he seems to trace a map of the universe on a single cell membrane, right between her eyes.

His supporting thumb moves ponderously, curling across her skull in broad, indulgent whorls, great winding rivulets of thought. He is breathing deeply, slowly. As if by touching her, he might cleanse some ancient, heavy conscience. Exactly whose conscience, Shepard finds it difficult to determine.

After a moment he exhales, prompting her to follow his lead. Breathe.

"Preliminary tactile triggers established. Will supplement with auditory stimulation."

There is no further warning.

All at once, he occupies a great deal of space where he recently, certainly _wasn't,_ leaning forward until she's surrounded by him, shielded on all sides. His antiseptic, herbaceous scent, now familiar to her, settles over her face like a balm. She breathes deep, tasting mint and eucalyptus in the bottom of her lungs. Nestled within the shadow of his torso, the light of the room fades. The world narrows, balanced perfectly on the thread of his voice.

He starts with argon. Annunciating perfectly, he recites the noble gases directly into her ear.

In one great wave, a shiver rolls across her. A flood, a deluge, her entire body drowned and trembling. Struck dumb, her head falls into his naked palm. His smooth fingers, expectant and warm, bend eagerly into her neck.

She feels equal parts hypnotized and wide awake as he cradles her head…

The fingers of his free hand wander lightly across her skin, exploring her scalp, face, neck, collarbones…

Moving and speaking slowly, patient in a way she has never known him to be. Luxuriating in that slowness, he whispers easy nonsense…

Something hot slides down her cheek, wet and incriminating. Without pausing, he smoothes away the first of her tears.

"Healthy response," he breathes. "Can stop, if uncomfortable."

Blearily, she opens her eyes. Blowing bubbles on her chest, the sunfish has gentled. In meditative circles, it turns and turns, fins glittering.

She relaxes into his hands, closing her eyes. "I'm alright, Mordin."

He hovers, breath warm against her temple. "Thank you, Grace."

Her name, shaped by his mouth, quivering and new, transfigured.

A golden word, a blessing.

Grace.


End file.
